Short stretch of expressway on US 169 near Delaware, OK

[bugo]

There is a 1.6 mile long section of US 169 near Delaware, OK that is a 4 lane divided expressway. It is two lanes to the north as far as Coffeyville, Kansas and to the south all the way to Talala. What is the purpose for this short stretch of upgraded highway? There are no stub ends on either end of this road, so it doesn't look like they plan on extending it anytime soon. There is nothing nearby that suggests that this road should be 4 lanes. It's just a stretch of expressway out in the middle of nowhere. The only things of note along this stretch are twin bridges over the Verdigris River and a junction with OK 28. Why did ODOT build this highway like this?

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.7539752,-95.6459622,3256m/data=!3m1!1e3

[Scott5114]

They probably anticipated traffic counts to rise in the future, so when the bridge needed to be replaced, they did a twin bridge as a form of future-proofing. They may have extended the improvement north to correct a safety concern at SH-28 as well.

[Bobby5280]

My guess is the expansion to 4 lanes with frontage roads was done for safety purposes with regard to the OK-28 junction. That little stretch of US-169 has been 4-laned at least since the early 1990's. I can't help but wonder if some really serious car accidents took place at that intersection before the road was widened.

One example close to where I live is OK-49 from the I-44 Medicine Park exit over to the junction with OK-58, which heads up past Lake Lawtonka. In the 1990's OK-49 was a narrow 2 lane road with lots of trees closely flanking the highway. Some really bad, fatal collisions happened on that road. The traffic counts aren't really all that high. In the late 1990's ODOT (and Fort Sill) cut the tree line well back from the road, altered the cuts through the hillsides and expanded the highway to 4 lanes. There are no more blind spots on that road.

[bugo]

If it is indeed because of the OK 28 intersection, why aren't all major highways that go through intersections 4 laned through those intersections? It seems odd that they would do it for this intersection but not for others.

I remember riding on this stretch in the 1980s and it was 4 lanes then. I wondered then why it was an expressway and I wonder why today.

[Rick1962]

That section was built back in the early-1960s as part of a realignment of 169 from the south end of the four-lane to the Kansas line, on a four-lane ROW. The divided highway is located where 169 crosses the Verdigris River/Oologah Lake floodplain, and if you look at the Google street view, you can see how much higher the roadway is than the river bottom it crosses.

It was likely built as divided highway anticipating higher traffic counts and eventual four-laning of 169 from Tulsa to Kansas, and higher future costs if it was built as only two-lane.

Since it was built at the same time as Oologah Dam, there may well have been Federal money available for part of the project, too (courtesy of Senator Robert S. Kerr, who was very powerful). In any event, it was a good example of advance planning by the Department of Highways, even though the higher traffic volumes have yet to materialize, and with them, the need for a divided highway.

[Brian556]

I think some people were baffled because it is so rare that the government actually gets ahead and gets something done before it is needed.

[In_Correct]

They probably anticipated traffic counts to rise in the future, so when the bridge needed to be replaced, they did a twin bridge as a form of future-proofing. They may have extended the improvement north to correct a safety concern at SH-28 as well.

Every Road should be Future Proofed. If not, they will have to build new alignments.

They included a a river and a highway intersection. It is weird they would select that area for Future Proofing, unless there were major accidents at The Intersection and / or The River. Or some thing.

If they replaced the Bridge in the 1960s, the original bridge must have been a very narrow bridge.

The Sprawl is not very far from this 4 lane divided segment. Perhaps eventually it will be extended. But now it has no plans for widening.

[Bobby5280]

I think some people were baffled because it is so rare that the government actually gets ahead and gets something done before it is needed.

Considering just when this widening project was done (decades ago), the idea of building for the future wasn't such an alien concept back then. The government and society in general put a much higher priority on building out highways back then.

Every Road should be Future Proofed. If not, they will have to build new alignments.

In a perfect world roads would be future proofed. I'm sure there are plenty of traffic engineers telling policy makers just what is needed in terms of road improvements as well as things like ROW preservation. Very clearly the advice of these engineers is being overridden by the legions of dummies in the general public and the policy makers only too happy to pander to them.

Something as simple as preserving land along an important corridor seems too much to ask for many states. It's not all that hard to build a 2 lane road with set-backs and utility easements that leave enough room to convert it to a 4 lane expressway later. Or even a freeway with frontage roads. That gets shot to hell by business owners who insist on building their buildings, apartment complexes or whatever as close as possible to the highway's main lanes. The policy makers cave in to make these movers and shakers happy rather than thinking about the big picture, long term view.